My big project for the fall was to extend the flower bed along the remaining (west) side of the house. I had already purchased all the edger stones, and I planned what plants would go where (and ordered the plants/bulbs online). It turned out to be a pretty big project.
Here are some pictures from along the way:
This is what it looked like with almost everything planted…I can’t wait to see how wrong I am about what will do well in that light and/or for nothing to even come up in the spring:
During a monsoon, we had a sizable wet spot in the ceiling over the dining room table. The rubber gasket around a vent was dry-rotted. Here’s my little roofer saving the day:
A nagging problem with this house is that the ornamental brick half-wall in the front has continued to sink into the earth over time (don’t even get me started on how every downspout on this house is retardedly designed). Several years ago, a mason cut the wall free from the house, so that it didn’t crack any more bricks as it fell. The gap between the wall and the house had probably doubled at the top of the half-wall, so this spring when the concrete levelers came out, I had them attempt to drill through the footer of the wall to level it. They said their drill bits were not long enough to get through the footer, and one of the guys gave my dad a dull drill bit when my dad asked about fashioning a longer drill bit.
Fast forward to the fall, when my dad showed up and produced this:
After a bunch of BS calling concrete-leveling companies and trying to describe the situation and the drill bit, we ended up with a different concrete-leveler company coming out, and my dad trying to drill with his super long drill bit for them to shoot concrete through. His drill bit got stuck (it’s now cut off just below the soil line), but the concrete-levelers managed to drill through the footer with their (seemingly shorter) drill bits. The holly bush got a good raising out of all this, but so did the wall, which is now suitably close to level again! HOORAY!
Before pics:
After pics:
